The illustrative embodiments disclosed in the present application are useful in systems including those for providing accounting functions and more particularly are useful in systems including those for providing charge-back invoice generation using aggregated bill data.
A system describing integrated bill consolidation, payment aggregation and settlement methods is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,978,780, issued Nov. 2, 1999 to Watson and incorporated herein by reference.
In a typical office environment, such as a small law firm, charges are often incurred and they are often attributable to one or more clients. For example, a small law firm may have a mailroom staff that processes outgoing shipments. Additionally, the firm may use outside services and may procure goods. Shipping organizations such as FEDEX®, UNITED PARCEL SERVICE® (UPS®), AIRBORNE EXPRESS® and the UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE® (USPS) provide shipping services for shipping parcels. Furthermore, office service functions such as facsimile and copy processing are often provided by organizations such as Pitney Bowes Management Services, Inc. (PBMS). Office supplies and other goods are often obtained through vendors such as Staples.
In a small law firm, the firm may utilize only one shipper and have only one account number for the entire firm. In such case, the firm will typically receive one monthly bill itemizing charges over the last month. The shipments may include a reference code such as a client/matter identifier. The firm may then take a month or more to pay the shipping company. The firm will typically manually reconcile the charges listed on the bill from the shipper by having an employee identify the client/matter numbers where possible or investigating the source of the charges in order to enter the costs individually into an invoice for each client. Such reconciliation may occur on a monthly or quarterly basis. Similarly, services including copy and facsimile services may be utilized for various clients having more than one matter number.
Certain cost recovery systems such as those available from EQUITRAC® of Coral Gables, Fla. may allow the capture of internal point-of-service client/matter information for internally provided services. In such a situation the firm may connect a cost center terminal to each copy machine in order to facilitate the capture of usage information that then enables a periodic usage report generation for later cost allocation among clients. In such systems, certain usage data may be exported to an accounting system.
In another typical office environment such as a business office for a small manufacturing company, the shipping department may ship parcels using four different carriers for ten or more distinct departments inside the company. In such a situation, each department may have one or more distinct account numbers for each of the four carrier services. Accordingly, the accounts payable department may receive ten separate monthly bills from each of four carriers for a total of at least forty bills from shipping carriers each month. The carriers may wait a significant amount of time for payment and the employee may be confused by bills that may appear duplicative resulting in payment irregularities and errors that take significant resources to resolve. Additionally, service and goods vendors may provide numerous bills to the accounts payable department. The charges or some of the charges may then be charged back to internal cost centers or to clients by manually reconciling the received bills and entering the information into an accounting or billing system after the periodic bills are received.